Forensic Geomorphology

Ruffell, A., & McKinley, J. (2014). Forensic Geomorphology. Geomorphology, 206, 14-22.https://doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.geomorph.2013.12.020

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Download date:10. Dec. 2020

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Review Article

Forensic Geomorphology

Alastair Ruffell and Jennifer McKinleya aSchool of Geography, Archaeology & Palaeoecology, Queen’s University, Belfast,

N.Ireland. BT7 1NN

Telephone: 00442890973350 Fax: 0044289097321280 Email: a.ruffell@qub.ac.uk

ABSTRACT

Geomorphology plays a critical role in two areas of geoforensics: searching the land

for surface or buried objects and sampling or imaging rural scenes of crime and

control locations as evidence. Most of the associated geoscience disciplines have

substantial bodies of work dedicated to their relevance in forensic investigations, yet

geomorphology (specifically landforms, their mapping and evolution, soils and

relationship to geology and biogeography) have had no such exposure. This is strange

considering how fundamental to legal enquiries the location of a crime and its

evolution are, as this article will demonstrate. This work aims to redress the balance

by showing how geomorphology is featured in one of the earliest works on forensic

science methods, and has continued to play a role in the sociology, archaeology,

criminalistics and geoforensics of crime. The application geomorphology has in

military/humanitarian geography and environmental/engineering forensics is briefly

discussed as these are also regularly reviewed in courts of law.

Keywords Forensic Science; Geoforensics; soils; landforms; crime; burials

1. Introduction

Forensic in the context of this article is taken to be pertaining to the law, and thus

commonly includes the criminal investigations that are central to this review

(homicide [murder in some countries], kidnap, theft, rape, smuggling, extortion), but

also scientific investigations that may be anticipated as coming before a court of law.

The word has been placed in front of almost every area of study one can imagine,

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from the well-established forensic chemistry/biology/psychology, to the more recent

use of forensic accountancy/cookery/something missing?. What is most surprising is

that most, if not all, of the geoscience sub-disciplines have found application in

criminal or legal investigations, from forensic archaeology, pedology, geology,

geophysics, geoscience to geoforensics. The diversity of terms is baffling: Ruffell

(2009) attempted to define the origin and scope of the above. To add to the milieu,

but also to redress the balance, the application of geomorphology to investigations

into serious criminal activity (see above for scope) is here considered. This is

somewhat surprising, given that one of the earliest handbooks on forensic science (or

criminalistics), included sections on geography and geomorphology (Gross, 1893, see

below). Indeed Schumm (2005) implores his geomorphologist colleagues to not be

afraid of being involved in cases of litigation, they being the best qualified scientists

available to comment on changing water courses, the causes of landslides or

environmental pollution and the reasons for buildings failure on unstable ground. We

hope this article reinforces and perhaps expands on that of Schumm (2005). In this

article, 'forensic' aspects of physical geography, geomorphology and landform

mapping are considered. We briefly include environmental, military, humanitarian

and engineering enquiries, these being too vast in their scope for one review. Also

not considered here in detail is the association between the psychology of the

perpetrator and/or victim and landscape morphology. This area of what is essentially

criminal profiling is a huge subject beyond the scope of this work, although elements

are mentioned where relevant of course, as all acts subject to forensic analysis were

conducted by people in a place. This reflects a fundamental principle in this work:

that the shape of the land influences or controls human activity, and that this can be

applied to geoforensics, in the above sense. The articles chosen for review reflect

personal preference for each of the subject sub-headings and are not exhaustive.

Many of the works, especially edited volumes, contain sufficient literature to allow

the reader to explore the literature in each of the sections (below) discussed.

Commented [JM1]: really?

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Soil, sediment and rocks have all been used in criminal investigations since 1854

(Scientific American, 1854). However, the first use of any of the geoscience

disciplines with the word forensic was by Brooks and Newton (1969), who used the

term ' forensic pedology'. This was followed by Murray and Tedrow (1975), with

their book 'Forensic Geology'. Although the shape of the land or Earth's surface and

the way it has evolved is critical to many investigations such as searching, sampling

and how people behave in a landscape, the term forensic geomorphology has never

been used in a stand-alone publication, which is peculiar given the importance of the

landscape in investigations (knowingly or not on the part of the investigator), as the

review (below) will hopefully demonstrate. The closest publication to this work in

terms of scope is Ruffell and McKinley 's (2008) chapter of the same title, where

some aspects of geomorphology in criminal investigations were discussed. The

current work differs in concentrating on a review of published work that uses the

morphology of the land, changing soil/landuse types and or associated biogeography

in forensics. The article is arranged roughly chronologically (the section on the FBI

perspective by Boyd [1979], is placed later, to fit with the sociological perspective)

and where appropriate by author name, as many individual workers have developed

their work in successive articles. This layout hopefully reflects the development of

the uses of geomorphology, as well as demonstrates how advanced some early works

were.

2. The Historic Perspective: Hans Gross’s 1894 'Handbook for Examining

Magistrates'.

This book is important in forensic science in that it is one of the first comprehensive

texts on conducting crime scene examinations. Gross's book is all the more

remarkable in that it includes many sections on physical geography/geomorphology,

as well as urban and peri-urban geography: all far in advance of many later works.

Gross saw the whole landscape as a dynamic and interacting environment, indicating

that an investigator should familiarise themselves with both the concept of scale as

well as geography: ‘hotels, public houses, clubs and brothels, because of the brawls

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that may take place in them. Ponds and wells in villages on account of possible

accidents by drowning, forests because of poaching and illicit felling.’ The most

relevant (to this review) section of Gross’s book is as visionary as the rest of his book

is to forensic science in general. The section is entitled ‘Sketch of a Larger Portion of

Country’ (p. 247) and it disguises what is actually contained, which is constitutes the

first landscape-based crime scene map ever published (see below). Gross starts with a

comment that making a drawing of large-scale features is a challenge, all the more so

as he was working in a time before the kinds of topographic maps (e.g. 1:25,000,

1:50,000 scale produced by most of the Ordnance Survey departments of the world)

geomorphologists are used to working with had been completed. Gross was also

working prior to the invention of accurate measuring devices. As well as large-scale

mapping being ‘difficult’ he makes an initial statement ‘at times it is important to

know whether the spot may be seen from a distant point’, an obvious reference to the

shape of the land, to covert activity, to viewability from afar, and years ahead of

Geographic Information Systems (or Science: both GIS) applications such as

viewshed analysis. In his Figure 34 (p. 248) Gross attempts to integrate physical and

human features of the environment that were pertinent to his view as a crime scene

investigator. Such is the historical importance of this figure, plus the fact that many

readers of Geomorphology may be gratified to see such maps in a book on

criminalistics, prompted us to re-draft his map (Figure 1). Gross returns to

considering the shape of the land in his section on topographic modelling, and

considers contour maps, then actually making a model of the land from clay, partly to

understand the environment of the scene of crime, but also he points out, to

communicate with witnesses as to where they were in relation to other places,

features and locations. Gross notes that the making of such models is time-

consuming, especially if forests, buildings and annotations are included. His ultimate

aim is to create a representation of the landscape both for his and other investigators

understanding, as well as (presumably) a jury. Gross would have been amazed at the

invention of stereo-pair aerial photography, digital terrain models and computer-

assisted three-dimensional visualisation of the land, which are after all, very clever

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ways of doing what he was doing with clay models. Gross further demonstrates this

in his Figure 35, where he depicts what is visible, or hidden, from a certain location.

In this, he was demonstrating line of sight, or what is modelled digitally in a

viewshed analysis using GIS. Again, this visionary concept of the use of physical

geography in understanding covert activity has prompted us to re-draw Gross’s

diagram (Figure 2). What Gross does not amplify on is the applied use of his models:

the search specialist or behavioural scientist investigating a missing persons case can

instantly see the benefit. It is a pity that no photograph of Gross’s clay topographic

models now exist, as (like his ‘Sketch of a of a Larger Portion of Country, our Figure

1) it would have been excellent to examine what he made and how he represented

landscape features. Below, we will see how ahead of his time Gross was in that some

recent studies have effectively been using Gross’s ideas in geomorphically-based

searches.

3. The Sociological Perspective: Rossmo’s (2000) ‘Geographic Profiling’

Rossmo states that ‘geographic profiling is an investigative methodology that uses the

locations of a connected series of crime to determine the most probable area of

offender residence … developed from research conducted at Simon Fraser

University’s School of Criminology, the method is based on a model that describes

the criminal hunt.’ Rossmo goes further, in examining the spatial patterns produced

by the hunting behaviour and target locations of serial violent criminals. Inherent in

the above definitions are the association Geographic Profiling has with locating the

offender’s place of residence, an admirable aim in itself, but one that does not allow

other aspects of geographic science, specifically geomorphology, to be included in

either the definition, nor the application of geography to criminology, specifically

understanding the interaction between the perpetrator and the landscape, as well as

assisting in the search for items (buried or exposed) in a landscape. This is probably a

function of statistics, as Rossmo states, only 2% of serial cases of the murderer

encountering their victim occur in ‘rural’ or ‘wilderness/uninhabited’ locations (his

Table 9.6, p 175). However, what he describes as ‘body dump’ (p. 175), or body

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deposition sites, show 5.8% in parks, 12.5% in rural or agricultural and 21.2% in

wilderness of uninhabited areas of ‘land use’ (p. 175). These statistics are worth

exploring, as they justify the limited use Rossmo sees for Geographic Profiling in the

sense of predicting offender activity, but they do show how under-used

geomorphology is in assisting the search for missing persons, especially murder

victims (Table 1). Nonetheless, Rossmo’s definition is somewhat contradictory, as

one of the key examples he cites in the use of Geographic Profiling is that of the

‘Catch Them’ (CATCHEM) database (Burton, 1998), wherein distances from

footpaths, concealment, burial, disposal in water are central tenets of Burton’s work,

which is equally applicable to the urban, peri-urban, rural or adjacent to aqueous

environments. Furthermore, when Rossmo does consider elements of the physical

environment (rivers, oceans, lakes, ravines [p. 214]), he sees them as constraining

‘people’: here we argue that while this is true of non-offenders, the perpetrator of a

crime sees the above locations as places of opportunity, being covert and/or in a

medium in which an object can be hidden. This is equally true of Keppel & Weis’s

(1994) analysis of murders in Washington State, which did not differentiate the

geographical type of area, but considered instead locations where the victim was last

seen, contacted (by offender or other), assaulted, murdered, and body recovered.

These event locations may be coincident, but are useful, as they are not dependent on

a type of location. In contrast to this study of murders, an FBI study of rapes (Warren

et al., 1995), showed very low occurrence outside of the urban environment, and even

then a low rate of rapes outdoors. Rossmo suggests arson has similar statistics.

Interestingly, the one case Rossmo cites where Geographic Profiling assisted in the

search for the body of a missing person, the case is rural in nature*, reflecting the

main issue proposed in this article, that we agree with Rossmo, serious crimes are

less common in rural locations, but that his definition of the geographic in

Geographic Profiling precludes use of geomorphology in both understanding criminal

behaviour (the interaction of the offender with the natural environment) and assisting

in the search for missing persons.

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*’In November 1993, a teenage boy was found shot dead in his parked car, and his

girlfriend kidnapped, in New Brunswick. The murderer was identified through rifle

ballistics, but disappeared prior to arrest. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police began

to theorise that the missing female victim had been killed and the offender had

committed suicide. Two searches failed to find evidence. A geographic profile was

prepared and it identified two search areas using path analysis, journey to crime and

time-distance-speed calculations. A search located items associated with the offender

in a river under a railway bridge and the body of the female victim in a field. The

former was in the highest prioritised area for search, the latter in the second.’

Rossmo’s New Brunswick case comes close to using mapping in crime analysis, in

that he applies GIS to his analysis (his Chapter 10, pp185). Rossmo makes an

excellent case for the use of computer-assisted spatial analysis of crime, with the

proviso that such databases require quality information (rubbish in, rubbish out),

which maybe lacking for criminal activity outside of urban areas. The power of

analysing spatial mean and standard distance as a connected series can be increased

by incorporating greater sophistication, such as street networks, freeway exits, and

most critical for this review ‘other relevant landscape characteristics’ (p. 187). This,

to our mind, includes the physical environment, wherein the ‘obstacles’ Rossmo

considers as barriers can (regardless of use), be incorporated into a GIS in order to

assist in the analysis of offender activity, and possibly provide a predictive model,

although ‘future crime prediction can be a difficult task’ (p. 187).

Rossmo provides ample statistical justification for using geomorphology in the search

for body deposition (‘dump’) sites, as opposed to criminal behaviour (see Table 1,

based on Rossmo). The other elements where offender behaviour interact with the

physical environment are included on p. 131, where Rossmo summarises the speed

with which an offender can travel over different (all be they basic) types of terrain (a

direct function of geomorphology) and how buried victims may be detected : in this

latter section (p. 131), Rossmo refers largely to other works.

In conclusion, the geomorphological justification for including Rossmo’s book here,

in comparison to the other publications reviewed, is slight. However, the background

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to the geographic location of criminal activity (especially the statistically-higher

chance of body disposal being away from the urban environment), the need for some

discussion of the use of the word ‘geographic’, and the indications that GIS will

increasingly be used to analyse all aspects of the offender’s environment (not just

locations, transport) make this a useful background to where geography is perceived

and used in the law enforcement and search/rescue community.

4. The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) Perspective: Boyd (1979) ‘Buried

Body Cases’

Boyd (1979) considers the specific search for buried bodies (our approach is to widen

the context to all covertly-buried materials). Many people concentrate on the surface

expression of a burial – naturally because they are fixating on finding the victim (or

other object). As Boyd shows, the succession of activity prior to, during, and after the

burial are also critical, both as events that alter the landscape and give rise to the

surface expression one is looking for, but also to reconstruct what has happened,

when and how: the fundamental questions asked in geomorphology. Initially, there is

the choice of a burial location: this is not considered by Boyd, but features heavily

here, as landscape plays a huge part in the behaviour of offenders. At the would-be

burial location, there is likely to be soil or sediment stratigraphy and sometimes

vegetation. These are successively disturbed and have to be stored or removed (the

latter is unlikely but does happen). The body (or other object[s]) is placed in the

burial location, commonly elongate but sometimes dismembered, foetal, depending

on constraints imposed by burial pit geometry (space available, tree roots etc.), or by

rigor mortis in the victim. The grave is infilled with what is now foreign material: the

excavated vegetation, soil, sediment and rock layers have now all been homogenized

to make this effectively ‘new’ ground. Attempts to conceal the surface of the grave

are rare in rural locations, common in urban; the former being often ‘left to nature’,

while in the latter, building materials, flower-beds etc. are common, whereas bare

earth is not, requiring concealment. Boyd summarises the offenders as having left:

remnants of the excavated material around the edge of the grave, disrupted

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stratigraphy, damaged vegetation, foreign materials introduced (infill, human bodies,

weapons etc.) and an unusual local geochemical environment. These are the features

we (forensic geoscientists) currently use to locate graves (Harrison & Donnelly,

2008).

Boyd was considering the local affects of burial caused by one body. Two influences

have been key in changing how Boyd’s work would now be considered. First, the

wider influence of the surrounding landscape is seen as important in determining

where a burial is located (offender activity) and how it is located (see Harrison &

Donnelly, 2008, reviewed below). This is largely the result of the improved

resolution of satellites and aerial photography, the creation of digital terrain models

and thus the possibility of understanding more about the landscape (rural or urban, or

other) the burial has occurred in. Second, the publicised discovery of large burial sites

(mass graves, illegal dumps, weapons and associated facilities) has increased since

1979 when Boyd wrote his article. Thus we see anthropologists currently concerned

with remote sensing, geophysics and geomorphology when 20 years ago these were

separate specialisms. Even if large-area data (maps, satellite photos) are not required

in order to narrow down a search, they are often requested (a) in case the first search

is unsuccessful – why have to re-trace your steps? And (b) to understand the

landscape in context of other factors – offender behaviour, access, visibility,

diggability and what may have happened in the area since burial (landslides, bog

slides, flooding, dune migration). Hence many searches still begin with a desktop

study of all the large-scale data available on topography (maps, digital terrain

models), vegetation (maps, remotely-sensed data), soils and geology (maps,

remotely-sensed data) and drainage (Harrison & Donnelly, 2008). Large-area maps

(topographic, hydrology), digital terrain models and landscape interpretation are also

needed when planning excavation activity for health and safety assessment of natural

and induced hazards (flooding, landslip, subsidence).

5. The Criminalistics Perspectives

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5.1. Killam on ‘The Search for Human Remains’

Killam (2004) provides the most comprehensive work on the search for human

remains, much of which can be translated to other objects buried or hidden in a

landscape. Killam’s book is based on a mix of criminalistics, archaeology,

behavioural analysis and search and rescue. Throughout the text, Killam refers

indirectly to various aspects of geomorphology, from murderers using ‘paths of least

resistance’ (p. 17) to move victims (and thus routes that should be avoided by search

personnel in case of compromise), to the need for those searching to take special care

in searching downhill from any access, as the easiest path, but also one where

remains will move or be moved by animals. Many of the aspects developed further by

Harrison & Donnelly (2008) and McKinley et al. (2008) are mentioned by Killam,

including (p. 18) graves likely to be in diggable ground, away from rocks and tree

(roots), and in a secluded place, the latter being ideally suited to viewshed analysis.

Killam also mentions pre-existing sites such as lakes, ponds, wells (not caves

interestingly) and landfills. Killam notes how topography is not only important in the

location of hidden objects (in his case, human remains), but should be used positively

to assist the search itself (p. 27). The most obvious example he gives is deployment

of a strip or line search that follows contours, providing maximum coverage of the

ground, for minimal effort. The bulk of Killam’s book comprises a description of

search methods (dog deployment, soil compaction/chemistry, geophysics, remote

sensing), with the chapter on aerial photography (p. 160 to 184) including the most

implicit use of geomorphology, with discussions of vertical, oblique, stereo-pair

photographs in visualising the landscape. Killam then discusses (p175) the

interpretation of aerial photography, including how ‘any anomalies noted on the

ground’s surface should be marked’. He discusses how such anomalies are discerned

from natural features (p. 178) and lists the colour/texture of land and soil, field

patterns, the shape of the land and shadows. An interesting addendum to Killam’s

chapter on aerial photography would be to have the same data interpreted by an

archaeologist/search expert and by a geomorphologist and see what results compare

and which differ.

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5.2. Harrison and Donnelly (2008) on ‘Locating Concealed Homicide Victims’

The principles of search that are explored and described by Harrison & Donnelly

include many aspects of geomorphology, placed in generic language that allows

translation of the principles to many types of environment. Central to their discussion

of search methodology is the difference between ‘Scenario-based’ and ‘Feature-

based’ searching. The scenario-driven method has close links to Rossmo’s work (see

above), wherein the known or predicted behaviour of both victim and perpetrator are

considered, in this case in terms of where a body may be concealed. Key to this are

likely distances travelled by both, and means of transport. Harrison & Donnelly play

down the importance of the landscape in terms of the victim, who is largely out of

control of where their body will end up. The main role location has for the victim is

where they encountered the perpetrator – in this matter the landscape is important as

it may also be the site of an assault, murder and body disposal. The landscape, and

thus geomorphology, is far more critical in terms of the perpetrator’s knowledge and

behaviour, for the search specialist will be trying to replicate their thought processes

in terms of where they know of covert locations, access, pre-existing hollows,

tunnels, pits, caves and diggable ground. Less like Rossmo’s more behavioural-based

approach to the landscape, and more akin to traditional geomorphology, is Harrison

& Donnelly’s second search method, that based on ‘Feature-based’ or ‘Feature-

focussed’ understanding. In this, physical aspects of the landscape are critical, as the

offender rarely carries out all their activities in a random location, be this the

observation (“hunting” of Rossmo) and stalking, attack, assault, murder and primary

or subsequent stages of body disposal. Some elements of chance occur in the

behaviour of the perpetrator, for instance in the location of an encounter with a

potential victim. Other aspects have a greater element of control, for instance a

planned burial. To some degree therefore, the offender operates in relation to a

landscape, and especially its’ distinctive features or a landmark (a rock, tree, lake,

path, shape of hill, line of sight to a feature). Often the reason for one or all stages of

the crime occurring near a landscape feature are obvious – to return and check for

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disturbance or maintain control of the corpse or evidence. Sometimes this is less

obvious in that a landscape feature is present, but the reason why is not known or it

was a subconscious act, or indeed a random chance. Other elements of Harrison &

Donnelly’s work have a strong basis in geomorphology – offender effort and

topography, viewabbility (viewshed analysis) and diggability (soil thickness and

cohesion).

6. The Archaeological/Anthropological Perspective

6.1 Hunter, Roberts & Martin (1996) on the Archaeology of the Victim in the

Landscape

Whilst many books encompass the application of archaeology/anthropology to

forensics, most concentrate on excavation, identification of bones and pathology.

Many do examine methods of detection (geophysics, scent dogs), but Hunter et al.

(1996) consider more than other works the role of the landscape in search (here

specifically for human bodies, unlike some of the works [above] that may be applied

to all manner of buried objects. This inclusion of both the broad search (not just over

a possible grave, but the whole area) is apparent in Hunter et al from their earliest

pages, wherein photographs of the searches for victims of the Moor’s Murderers (Ian

Brady and Myra Hindley) are included, and a sub-section (p. 17) called ‘The

Landscape’ leaves the reader in no doubt of how this work incorporates much more

than the ‘digging’ archaeology familiar to all. This section raises some of the

fundamental questions of where is ‘diggable’, and why a desktop study of

topographic maps so useful in planning and conducting a search. These aspects are

expanded upon in the key chapter (Chapter 5, pp86-100), where the writers (for this

chapter, Hunter and Martin were the authors) consider some background (including

parapsychology) and then outline a useful ‘macro to micro’ approach to the

terminology of search, from the search area (all of the terrain), burial site (the grave

and associated disturbance), the grave (only), search indicators (ground

abnormalities) and vegetation. The concept of ‘near-field’ (around the grave) and

‘far-field’, the undisturbed surroundings, is introduced from work by France et al.,

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1992), from work in North America, and again recognises the importance of the

burial site in the context of the landscape, as opposed to it in isolation. Hunter et al,

use Killam (see above) as one of their sources when describing soil disturbance and

the subsequent changes in vegetation, and go further in discussing how in temperate

climates, a body buried in impermeable ground may promote plant growth above, yet

when the body is covered with stones or stony soil, the opposite may occur. The

problem of observing soil disturbances after some time has passed is considered, and

Hunter et al consider some solutions such as observing the ground in low light

conditions and interpreting aerial photographs from a combined

archaeological/geographic perspective, to highlight non-natural features.

Archaeologists are well-versed in using aerial imagery, and Hunter et al’s case study

(p. 91) is an excellent example of how fortuitous use of historic imagery allowed a

search for a missing woman to be narrowed down, saving human and financial

resources in what would have been a fruitless search. While strictly an exercise

conducted over a non-natural area (and thus not strictly the use of geomorphology),

the study uses the same principles of changing land-use, vegetation, perpetrator

access to define a search area. A critical point is made on p. 93 concerning how to

appraise a landscape – ‘an assessment of what is or what is not likely to have been

possible, and the subsequent delimitation of target areas’, reflecting the macro to

micro ethos these authors recommend. They consider the desktop study of

topographic and geological maps as informing deployment of geophysical and other

search assets, which is exactly what later authors have done in their work, making

Hunter et al.’s work the standard from which others have followed and developed. As

mentioned above, Hunter et al quote Killam (see above) and France et al in their

work, such that a brief summary of the latter is useful in this review.

6.2. France et al. (1992) on the Multidisciplinary Approach to the Detection of

Clandestine Graves’ France et al. (1992)

France et al (1992) state that ‘only a few studies listed in the literature concentrate on

multidisciplinary methods directed toward the location of buried human remains’,

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which is reflected in the fact that Boyd is their key paper, also reviewed here. What is

novel about this work, is the temporal aspect to their study, in that they buried pig

carcasses in different geological, topographical, soil type locations in Colorado, and

then deployed a variety of search methods over a period of years to see how well the

burials could be detected. A variety of landforms and soil types and thickness was

key in selecting the burial sites. The range of geomorphological locations was not

further considered by the authors, as they were aiming to test the usefulness of search

assets over time. An interesting aside is that the authors were partly mimicking

perpetrators in their experiment, as they needed diggable ground, but probably not a

covert location. Soil permeability, slope aspect and rainfall all played significant parts

in influencing the effectiveness of the search methods France et al. (1992) deployed,

aspects that have also been researched from the perspective of the decay of human

remains researched at the University of Tennessee research facility known as ‘The

Body Farm’ (Rodriguez & Bass, 1985).

7. The Geoforensic Perspective

7.1. Pringle et al., (2012) on the Forensic Search for Buried Objects

This work provides a context in which geomorphology and landform mapping is used

in the branch of geoforensics known as search. Pringle et al. (2012) review the

methods used from the large scale of a landscape (maybe tens to hundreds of km)

down to the site of an individual or mass burial (tens of metres down to decametres).

In the middle of this range of scales, they consider geomorphology, having described

remote sensing in a similar way, from satellite and aerial platform imagery, through

specialised remote sensing techniques (infra-red, ultra-violet, multi- and hyper-

spectral), before they look at ground searches for specific targets. In their review,

geomorphology is reliant on remote sensing, historical and land-use maps, but also

key to determining the next stage of the search, and the methods that will be suitable

for the work, from probing the ground, cadaver or missing person’s dogs, or the core

of their paper, geophysics.

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7.2. Ruffell and McKinley (2008) on Landform Mapping and Geomorphology

In their chapter on physical geography, the above include all elements of the Earth

system (water, air, soil/rocks and organisms) in the context of forensic investigations.

Their sub-section on geomorphology includes explanatory material for the non-

specialist (the nature of landforms, their evolution and classification), such that some

examples are shown. They then go on to explain in further detail what elevation

modelling is and give some indications (e.g. using line of sight to predict where a

covert location may be) as to how this maybe used in search. The sources of data

(satellite, aerial) and their manipulation (stereo-pairs for topographic modelling) are

considered in terms of geomorphology. They use a case study that is expanded on in

this work (see McKinley et al, 2008, below). Ruffell & McKinley use some

elementary examples in order to demonstrate to the reader how geomorphology has

been used in many famous cases, possibly without it being obvious to the general

public that the knowledge was not everyday information but had a scientific basis.

They include the following examples. In the case of the hunt for Osama bin Laden,

the geological succession exposed in a cave from which bin Laden made his famous

‘post 9-11’ broadcast, was critical in identifying his rough whereabouts in northern

Afghanistan. Karst features also figure prominently in the description of how solution

hollows (dolines) were misinterpreted by Allied Reconnaisance as bomb craters prior

to the D-day Landings. D-day was also used to show how important understanding

coastal geomorphology was in negotiating rocky reefs, steep cliffs and soft sand from

beach assaults. The invasion force undertook extensive studies from submarines,

aerial photography and covert landings, prior to the invasion in order to plan the best

locations for landing craft, parachute, battleship gunnery and cliff-scaling assault to

cope with the variable coastal geomorphology of the Normandy coastline. Ruffell &

McKinley complete their physical geography chapter with an unpublished example of

how a search for buried bodies in the Middle East did not take account of the timing

of the disappearance of a missing person and a nearby landslide, which covered the

victim. The presence of an isolated tree, where weapons were found focused the

16

search on object-based grounds (see Harrison & Donnelly, above) and not feature-

based (the landslide).

7.3. McKinley et al. (2008) on Geographic Information Science, Remote Sensing and

Landform Mapping

In the search for a missing person, McKinley et al. (2008) assisted the police because

a known serial killer was the last person to be seen with the victim, and the alleged

perpetrator was seen near the search location. This search area was delimited

naturally by a substantial river, a busy road and impassable peat bog (Figure 3). The

authors decided to use a landform mapping approach in order to understand the

landscape. They collected ground-based LiDar LiDAR and differential GPS for

topographic mapping, tied into military reconnaissance aerial photography. These

allowed division of the area into what the authors termed ‘domains’, or topographic

divisions with distinct morphology, vegetation, soils (especially thickness and thus

diggability), hydrology and viewability/access. The approach was thus a blend of

some of the works cited above, especially Harrison & Donnelly (2008), Killam

(2004) and Rossmo (2000). McKinley et al prioritised these domains using a mix of

criteria, from 10 being least likely and 1 being the most likely, being most covert

(viewshed analysis from LiDAR/GPS/aerial photography), diggable (soil mapping),

behavioural (distance to vehicle access). This was used to focus deployment of a

cadaver dog and carry out water sampling in a focused ‘search area’, both for the

detection of human remains. The use of landform mapping, allied to other assets

(vegetation, soils, behaviour) saved police time in searching the whole area. In order

to demonstrate this process from a landscape interpretation (combined with

behavioural analysis), the area shown in McKinley et al. (2008) is here reproduced,

but with a conventional set of observations (Figure 3).

8. Associated Uses of Geomorphology and Landform Mapping in Investigations

8.1. The Military – Humanitarian Perspective

17

Military applications include both the planning of (and understanding past use of)

transport routes, strategic high ground in battles and the location of covert activity in

low ground (Gregory, 1918; Collins, 1998; Caldwell et al. 2004). Forensic

geomorphology in humanitarian investigations overlap to some extent with other

criminal investigations, for instance viewshed analysis and lines of sight applied to

the locations of covert activity (mass executions, mass graves). Other areas include

assisting post-disaster searches (landslides, tsunami), in which pre- and post-event

topography and land use are critical, as reviewed below. A separate review article to

this one could be written on the role of geomorphology in military campaigns, given

that the preeminent workers on the subject (see the selected publications of Doyle,

Bennett and Rose, below) often use the term ‘military geology’, when physical

geography, land-use and vegetation are also considered. Military geomorphology is

justified in its brief (but relevant) inclusion here, as an analysis of what happened,

where and how, as in criminalistics, engineering or environmental enquiries. So inter-

related is geology with the landforms it influences, it is hard to draw individual

geomorphological examples from the works of Doyle & Bennett (1997, 1999, 2002)

and Rose & Mather (2010, and references to military hydrogeology therein).

However, some examples do stand out: they are numerous and thus only summarised

here, the reader being urged to consult the original publications for greater detail.

Topography (and the associated effort in getting up it, as with body disposal) has the

greatest role to play in non-urban warfare through the ages. Since before documents

have been kept, men have fought each other individually and in groups, and thewith

higher ground, while exposed, has nearly always providinged the advantage. Some

classic examples are listed below. High ground was of advantage in Thermopylae,

Hastings (to the English forces, prolonging their defeat by the French) and

Gettysburg, to name only a few. Topography influenced (to the point of controlling)

troop movements and action in the Somme (WW1), Verdun (WW1), Gallipolli

(WW1), Monte Casino and Salerno (Italy, WW2), the D-day Landings (WW2) and

Hill-137 (Vietnam). However, notable exceptions occur. In the Battle of Jieting

(China, 228BC), the defensive army of Wei was surrounded on the high ground of an

18

isolated hill, forcing their defeat and surrender. It is unfortunately inevitable that the

horrors of international and intra-national (civil) war go hand-in-hand with

humanitarian crimes such as mass burial (Nazi death camps, Cambodia, Rwanda,

Bosnia), where remote sensed detection of mass graves, the geomorphological

control on their location (water flow, soil depth) and topographic influence on

visibility make landform interpretation a key element to image interpretation

(Kalacska & Bell, 2006; Skinner et al., 2003; Davenport, 2001). The methods used

have also been deployed in post-disaster management, as remotely-sensed images are

often all that can be safely obtained following an incident. Satellite imagery was key

to deployment of resources following the Gujarat, Boxing Day Tsunami and Haiti

disasters. An excellent example of this type of combined remote-sensing and

geomorphic mapping is given in Wescoat & Kanda (2012), who used a classic three-

stage approach (desktop study using remote sensing; on-site recording of tsunami

effects using transect mapping; off-site analysis of the data) following a 11th March,

2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

8.2. Environmental and Engineering Forensics

Environmental applications may include the analysis of slopes, associated water flow,

and thus be important in predicting and analysing pollution spills. Forensic

geomorphology also overlaps with forensic engineering, as the latter is often

concerned with enquiries into why structures (buildings, bridges) failed. Sometimes

this is to do with poor construction, or poor foundations/slope stability, or sometimes

a combination of both. The main application of geomorphology to environmental

issues lies in tracking pollutants (as well as their causes and effects) in soil and water

courses. The number of publications where this is central to the work is enormous, as

a web search of the words the key words (above) reveals. Publications where the

forensic (pertaining to the law) aspect is a focus are fewer, as the bulk of the literature

concerns processes and methods, as opposed to criminal actions which feature in the

forensic literature. Some of the issues are the same as in the types of serious crime

considered elsewhere in this article, ranging from the macro-scale of landform

Commented [JM2]: isolated hill or knoll being the key here

19

mapping (Brilis et al., 2000) to the micro-scale of soil, sediment and water analysis

(Fitzpatrick, 2012). For instance Small et al. (2004) and Rowan et al. (2012) used the

same term (‘sediment fingerprints’) Bull & Morgan (2006) use in their consideration

of using quartz sand grain textures as a discriminant in soil and sediment forensics.

Rowan et al. (2012) use particle size distributions and geochemistry in their typing of

sediments in Lake Bala (Wales, UK), which are methods also commonly used in

serious crime forensics. Papastergios et al (2010) used a similar approach (using

sediment geochemistry) in tracking marine pollution from the fertilizer industry

(northern Greece). Many of the soil geochemistry-based publications concern

tracking radioactivity in soil movement, erosion and sediment depositional systems

(Ritchie & McHenry, 1990; Tyler & Copplestone, 2007). Fitzpatrick (2012) and

Fitzpatrick et al. (2009) see no difference between serious criminal cases (in the sense

of this article) and environmental forensics, both being subject to examination in

courts of law.

9. Conclusions

The early work of Gross and the sociological context of Rossmo, both show how

criminals operate in a landscape, which in rural (and some other) locations is better

understood by mapping and developing theories of landform evolution. The criminal,

victim, law enforcer and investigator all interact with this landscape and thus forensic

work will be advanced by the input of a geomorphologist. The cognate disciplines of

archaeology, geology, civil engineering and remote sensing have all benefitted from

numerous publications demonstrating their use to criminal, environmental and

humanitarian forensic investigations, when in rural settings geomorphology lies

behind all of these applications, yet has not had such exposure. This is strange when

the two strands of geoforensics; namely search (remote sensing, mapping,

geophysics, archaeology) and sampling/analysis (soil and sediment mineralogy and

geochemistry), both rely on understanding the landscape and its evolution. The

authors strongly suspect that many areas of geoforensics use some knowledge of

physical geography without necessarily acknowledging this, nor involving the

20

specialist in say, landform mapping from remote sensing. This also seems bizarre,

given as Schumm (2005) states “I have found highly qualified geomorphologists

reluctant to be involved in cases in which they clearly could contribute to an

appropriate outcome”. Hopefully, by showing that geomorphology has an important

historical legacy, and is the backbone of all the other geoforensic techniques, this

deficiency that criminal investigations suffer may be redressed. Likewise, difficult

though the work can be, other Earth scientists need geomorphologists in

investigations, whether they be serious crime or environmental. The wider

applications of forensic-type geomorphological work to engineering, military and

humanitarian investigations shows that it is not all about television programmes such

as ‘CSI’ (Crime Scene Investigators) and murders, in today’s litigious society there

are a multiplicity of roles for the geomorphologist.

Acknowledgements

This review was originally an overview of physical geography techniques and issues,

born from discussions with Peter Bull, Brian Whalley, and Laurance Donnelly. Other

work ensued but their work initiated this, for which they are gratefully

acknowledged. Lorraine Barry and Conor Graham assisted in data collection for our

case study, initiated by John Gilmore of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. The

encouragement of Keith Bennett, Chris Hunt, the Reviewers and Editor is also

acknowledged.

21

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Figures. Figure 1. Gross’s (1894) Figure 34 (p.248) ‘Sketch of a larger portion of country’.

Gross’s original was hand-drawn, this version is digital but otherwise faithful to his original. Gross provided no key to the diagram, so we presume (from left to right) the features shown are a quarry (lower left), field boundaries, different crop types and small forest (centre), a river, houses and church/graveyard (far right). The lettering represents his x,y grid notation.

Figure 2. Gross’s (1894) Figure 32, showing his view of a line of sight, some 100

years before its common derivation from digital data. In both Gross’s view, as well as modern criminalistics, such a model can be used to predict both where an offender is hidden from, as well as where a search team may see a victim.

Figure 3. The location of a police search for a missing person, with landscape and

behavioural interpretation. The same area was used to demonstrate the use of digital

data in McKinley et al. (2008). Reproduced from Land and Property Services data

with the permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, Crown

copyright and database rights MOU203.

26

Table 1. Geographical analysis of areas where murderers encountered their victims

and disposed of their remains. Simplifed from data in Rossmo (2000).

Area Land Use Encounter Body Dump All Sites

Residential 45.8 45.2 45

Commercial 43.2 3.8 24.4

Industrial 0 5.8 3.4

Institutional 3.2 1 1.9

Park 1.3 5.8 2.5

Rural or

Agricultural

0.6 12.5 5.3

Wilderness or

Uninhabited

1.3 21.2 9.1

Site description Encounter Body Dump All Sites

Residence 29 17.3 27.2

Hotel or Motel 0.6 0 1.3

Public Building 1.3 0 0.6

School or

Educational

0.6 0 0.3

Business or

Shopping site

11 1 7.8

Entertainment site 5.8 0 2.8

Red-light zone 23.2 0 11.3

Vehicle 6.5 5.8 11.6

Public transport 10.3 1 5.3

Private yard 1.3 5.8 2.5

Parking lot 3.9 2.9 3.4

Street or sidewalk 51 16.3 34.7

Alley, lane, path, 0.6 11.5 5.3

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trail

Highway, ditch 5.8 3.8 5.6

Park 1.9 6.7 3.1

Field/open 0 11.5 4.1

River, lake, marsh 0 21.2 8.4

Forest/woods 0.6 21.2 8.4

Hills/mountains 0 4.8 1.6

Desert/wasteland 0 3.8 1.3